Despite the stillness of my posture, the beats of my heart gradually intensify with each breath that I am taking. I am looking around and myriad of happy excited eyes are frenetically scanning the new comers. Dragging my luggage packed with dozens of presents, I am blending with the crowd in the search for her, my best friend, my mom, my sister. “Hide and seek mommy!” I heard myself giving voice to my thoughts. That's what she would always say when she would give the start for our everyday game. In a jiffy, grabbed from behind I am feeling that warm, soft hug filled with all the love in the world. I turn around and those amazingly green eyes kissed my soul and embraced my being in a way that only a mom could do.
That's how it started, my long expected trip in the Dracula's land in the search for a revelation. Leaving the ever vociferous Romanian airport, we were heading to the neighborhood of my childhood. My mind was cluttered by long past memories that engraved on my face a constant and undisturbed smile. I was living up the excitement of a three weeks trip where my everyday schedule would leave me sleepless.
Every summer I would return there, to my fantasy world where my heart would be infused with all the joyfulness of a child. I needed that dosage of happiness to be able after, to return and confront for another year the loneliness I was bathing in, the loneliness of a city cluttered by over eight million people. But this time would be different. Wasn't a trip planned for only visiting my family, but a whole country? I was in need for rediscovering Romania, a country that hosts the Danube Delta, that baths in Black Sea, that has the only funny cemetery in Europe, that takes pride in having the most monasteries on the continent, a country where Carpathians Mountains barricade Dracula's Castle and its mystical stories.
All these represented for me itineraries to be explored. Grabbing my backpack and my camera, I started my adventure traveling from south to north and west to east. Far from being what I imagined, the unexpected was omnipresent. Riding horses, traveling in gypsies carriages, being rubbed by them, getting lost in mountains and forgotten caves, drinking holy water from the monks' palms and climbing trees for apples were just a few of all those magical moments that filled my trip with surprises. I was discovering a world stripped away of the concreteness of a metropolis. Every step made was unfolding the unknown, where a perfect combination of the nature and a manufactured world would make me grave for more. That world hidden by forests, monasteries and myths of an East European country represented a deep breath of oxygen that pampered my unsettled soul, a self introspection within my nature. I felt healthier, more awake and rejuvenated.
Once I got back in my beloved hometown, I came in contact with my friends and their two years stories in a place where the pace of life was run by other notions of calibration than mine in a city that never sleeps. At the dinner table, in my grandparent’s home, my family's eyes fixed solidly on me but their gaze traveled to a time when I enjoyed prancing around in my diaper dreaming of becoming a dancer. My attitude was affected by the way they anticipated showing me every part of their lives. They had so much pride in their culture and way of life, in their little vineyards with house made wines, in their traditional folklore, in their natural tomatoes and unstained commercialized views. The epiphany that I had was giving me a different perspective about my nature. It struck me to realize how selfish in a way I had become. In all this time being away from my homeland, I was losing the appreciation of the little things that made life so wonderful.
After recollecting my thoughts, I felt like a new being made from a slightly different mold, a humble young woman that would emerge herself in the beauty of life through openness of the heart, momentous observation with detail orientation and detachment. My perspectives on what us and life mean have changed, opening a new exciting chapter of my life. With youthfulness in my heart and maturity in my thoughts, I salute you all, travelers of the world. ;)
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